Why do we have jobs? There are always at least two reasons, usually more. Before we can answer this, we have to ask: “From whose point of view do we want an answer?” I'm going to try to consider all of them.
First, in every case, we have the individual doing the job. Why does he/she do the job?
The short answer is usually money. But money is not really the answer. Money is a tool that can buy a lot of things, and it is those things that the individual wants. Unfortunately, most people have lost sight of that. And money is rarely the only answer.
The answer may be money to pay rent and groceries. It may be money to put away and grow for retirement. It may be money to pay for alcohol and gambling. (I didn't say it had to be a good reason.) Or it may be money for something else. It really doesn't matter, but the first reason is usually money for something.
But there's usually a second answer, too. A person may do a job to feel a sense of pride or accomplishment. They may actually enjoy what they do and feel a sense of purpose when they go to work. Or they may feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves and contributing to society.
Those are some of the most common reasons that individuals work. Let's look at some of the reasons that businesses want people to work.
Businesses need workers to keep the businesses running. Each business is different, but they all want as few employees as possible to keep the business running at as high a profit as possible.
Businesses want to make money. They want money for their owners and shareholders, usually not for their employees. They get the money from their customers and by paying their employees as little as they can get away with.
To businesses, employees are a necessary evil. They need them, but they don't want them.
Good businesses know that happy workers are more productive than unhappy workers, so they treat their employees well. But they're usually treating their employees well for their own benefit, not for altruistic reasons.
So employees want money, but employers want to give them as little as possible.
Then there is society's point of view. Why does society want people to have jobs?
First and foremost, society wants everyone to work together to bring everyone the goods and services that keep everyone “happy” and “healthy,” and out of trouble.
I put happy and healthy in quotes because society, at least American society, is much more concerned with the perceptions of what will make people happy and healthy than with actual happiness and healthiness.
Most of us believe in consumer culture, where shiny new toys bring oodles of joy. We believe it even though we're more depressed and unhappy than we've ever been. We believe it because it's easy, easier than actually needing to do things to be happy.
I could write a whole book about why we are unhappy, and I will write an article about it soon, but that's not the point of this article. This article is about jobs.
Society should want us to have jobs so that we can all contribute to making a world we all want. We all play a small part in making this giant mechanism work.
Unfortunately, businesses have convinced society that what it really wants is money.
Society wanting to make as much money as possible is ridiculous. Money is a tool and is worthless in itself.
Or is it?
Money can buy just about anything that's tangible. Including more money. So the rich get richer, and the rest of us get poorer, relatively speaking.
What that does, ultimately, is keep the rich people in power and keeps the rest of us begging to serve them.
Sure, we think we're serving ourselves, too. And sometimes we are, but as long as the distance between rich and poor keeps growing, we are working far more for them than for us.
We have jobs to buy things that businesses have convinced us that we want but, more often than not, they don't make us happy and end up in a landfill practically unused.
It would be more efficient and better for the environment to burn our money directly. But it wouldn't be better for jobs.
Society needs us to waste our lives doing jobs that keep the money machine churning but more often than not make us miserable.
Have you read The Four Hour Workweek?
It contains an often quoted story about a fisherman.
The fisherman is parking his small boat at a dock one evening and unloading a small catch that he will enjoy eating with his family that night.
A businessman comes up to him and says, “You know, if you caught more fish, you could sell them and get a bigger boat and catch even more fish and sell them and get a whole fleet of boats catching fish and become very rich.”
“And why would I want that?” the fisherman asked.
“So you could relax and fish and take care of your family,” says the businessman.
Of course, that's what the fisherman was already doing without all the extra work.
The story is meant for entrepreneurs, but it applies to society as well. So much of what we do is about making money and overcomplicating things, when we could get what we really want much more simply.
Now, I'm not saying that everything is unnecessary. I do love my indoor plumbing!
And a lot of other things, too. But we're well past the point of wanting to work harder to get more stuff. And I really don't want to work harder so the rich people can get more stuff.
In fact, I think it's time that we all worked a little less for money and a little more for the things we actually want.
Things like friendships and relationships. Things like clean and healthy environments and social justice.
These things are rarely where the money is, but they are where most of us would like to be spending our time.
Right now we are so caught up in the forty hour (or more) workweek, that few of us can imagine less. And we don't have time for the things that would actually make us happy.
As a society we have plenty of wealth. We just have a distribution problem.
And it's not even as bad as it seems.
I have a lot more to say on that subject but I'll leave that for future articles. For now I just want to make the point that we have more than we need.
Not only can we do with less, but we can do better with less. Think about it: What would ten hours less working do to your quality of life?
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